Too Many People
October is John Denver Month. Well, for me. I’ve been a fan of his music since I was 13. My brother was trying to convince me to listen to put away the classical records and the World War II standards and Broadway show tunes that I loved and listen to something modern and current.
I wanted nothing to do with the brain-melting hard rock he listened to. Some of the popular tunes were okay, a la Elton John, but nothing I would spend my allowance on. So he suggested I buy a John Denver album.
"You know,” my brother said, “Rocky Mountain High? You like that song. Why don’t you buy one of his albums?” I didn’t want to be totally unreasonable and totally unhip, so I bought Denver’s Greatest Hits album and I was instantly hooked. Around the time he died, in 1997, I made a mix of all my favorite JD songs and play it during October, which is when he died.
I liked his voice and his gentle style. Where rock and roll singers were screaming about peace while wreaking havoc, his songs were peaceful, about peaceful settings. Cathedral mountains. Wheatfields. Country roads.
An ecological cowboy country singer might seem like a strange choice of music for a Conservative teenager so dedicated that she threw over her U.S. History II grade and lectured her English class on the insidiousness of Liberal propaganda, a lecture the teacher refused to listen to.
But when it comes to ecology (that's what they used to call environmentalism), there shouldn’t be any reason for such divisiveness; it’s a win-win for both sides. The Libs get to save the planet, the Conservatives get to save money. Conservatives are neat, tidy people, as everyone saw at various rallies by Conservative groups on the National Mall. They no more want to see polluted rivers than they want to see the American flag burnt or dumped in a trash can.
Still, the Liberals can’t resist the urge to pervert a good idea into a social whip, drag it into the nether regions of wealth redistribution. Witness the fluorescent lightbulb, which will be mandatory in 2012, just two years away.
The smaller fluorescent bulbs have been around for at least 10 years. They’re more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but last longer and are more efficient. A Conservative’s dream. My brother (“Dollar Bill”) seeing a chance to save some green (money) bought a supply of them and instructed me to use them. I complied.
But leave it to the Liberals to find the Achille’s Heel in the fluorescent bulb: mercury. A dangerous substance if the bulb breaks. Did the Liberals outlaw this hazardous substance item? Not at all. They regulated it, and then legislated it into mandatory use. Now you must pay more money to buy this light bulb – the only light bulb retailers will be allowed to sell – and pay more money to dispose of it, and even more money to call in a HazMat team if it breaks in your home or office. It can also be bad for your eyes, especially working on your computer: something about the flicker rates, which are incompatible.
We learn from Glenn Beck (those of who didn’t know, including me, that is) about the Fabian Society, a genocidal socialist group in England which began in 1884 with leanings towards eugenics. One of is star members, George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygamlion (the story on which the musical My Fair Lady is based, only in his play, Eliza marries Freddie Eynsford-Hill). There are too many people, according to Shaw, and the useless ones should be neatly exterminated, like pests.
It reminded me of John Denver’s song, “Cold Nights in Canada” in which he pines for the fate of the Canadian Rockies. “How the life in the mountains is living in danger/From too many people, too many machines.” There are too many people and machines in New Jersey, too.
Denver was sincere in his beliefs. His songs were pleasant, but a bit unthinking. Being a fan, I bought most of his albums and attended four of his concerts. The one at the Jones Beach Theater on Long Island got rained out. Playing in the rain wasn’t in the contract of his union musicians, and no blame to them. Electrocution needn’t have been part of the deal.
But Denver was an honorable man - and a terrific singer and musician. He saw that a relative handful of us had still shown up to hear his concert and he honored our tickets. He couldn’t play the electric guitar, so he trotted out one of his folk guitars and played and sang for us; I believe unaided by electronics.
He also talked to us about how he rarely came East to do concerts here. He just didn’t like the East Coast; it was too crowded. There were too many people for his taste. It was dirty, crowded, and overbuilt. He preferred the open country of the West. No one on Long Island or in New Jersey could disagree with that assessment.
But what can you do? We also have too many deer. Hunters and imported coyotes (from the West) reduce the population. The Liberals, or Progressives, if you like, regard us in the same way. There are just too many people and something has to be done about it.
You can’t hunt them. But you can control them through government-sponsored medical care programs. First, you make them nice and comfortable. Offer them tempting programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Once enough of them are in the net, and you’ve bankrupted the system to the point that it’s no longer sustainable, you withdraw the care.
You begin with the most vulnerable demographic, the elderly. They’re going to die, anyway. They’re no longer of any use, according Shawnian standards. There’s no need for elaborate extermination machines, which would cost money to build. You simply withdraw their care.
Working from the other end, you sow dissatisfaction among the fertile female population at their lowly lot in life bearing children and tending to husbands. You introduce contraceptive drugs so they don’t overpopulate the globe and abortion in case they do. One last solution is to overtax undesirable families, to discourage political enemies from reproducing.
Just for good measure, too, to destabilize the nuclear family, you encourage over-stimulation in the younger generation, causing extra-marital pregnancies and illegitimate children with no financial support. These you want to preserve, because they’re your future socialist army.
You’ve now dealt with the fringes of the population. But there are still too many darned people. They’re also fighting back. So you regulate their lives and create onerous legislation that will discourage, and finally criminalize, dissent. Eventually, your lawyers can prove their danger to humanity and ultimately dispose of them. Legally.
The rest can be subdued through the destruction of the economy. Starving people will do anything you want, obey any command, carry out any order, unto the end of the earth. Your quest for power is nearly complete.
Except for their pesky God. Karl Marx may have observed that religion is the opiate of the masses. But you’d rather have them addicted to drugs than to religion. Destroying faith takes a generation or two. Mixed with some of the aforementioned drugs, it is possible to finally eliminate God and take His place as the ruler of the universe.
Sound crazy? Well, tomorrow we’re going to do our Glenn Beck homework and read for ourselves what this Fabian Society is all about. Then we’ll see who the lunatics really are.
I wanted nothing to do with the brain-melting hard rock he listened to. Some of the popular tunes were okay, a la Elton John, but nothing I would spend my allowance on. So he suggested I buy a John Denver album.
"You know,” my brother said, “Rocky Mountain High? You like that song. Why don’t you buy one of his albums?” I didn’t want to be totally unreasonable and totally unhip, so I bought Denver’s Greatest Hits album and I was instantly hooked. Around the time he died, in 1997, I made a mix of all my favorite JD songs and play it during October, which is when he died.
I liked his voice and his gentle style. Where rock and roll singers were screaming about peace while wreaking havoc, his songs were peaceful, about peaceful settings. Cathedral mountains. Wheatfields. Country roads.
An ecological cowboy country singer might seem like a strange choice of music for a Conservative teenager so dedicated that she threw over her U.S. History II grade and lectured her English class on the insidiousness of Liberal propaganda, a lecture the teacher refused to listen to.
But when it comes to ecology (that's what they used to call environmentalism), there shouldn’t be any reason for such divisiveness; it’s a win-win for both sides. The Libs get to save the planet, the Conservatives get to save money. Conservatives are neat, tidy people, as everyone saw at various rallies by Conservative groups on the National Mall. They no more want to see polluted rivers than they want to see the American flag burnt or dumped in a trash can.
Still, the Liberals can’t resist the urge to pervert a good idea into a social whip, drag it into the nether regions of wealth redistribution. Witness the fluorescent lightbulb, which will be mandatory in 2012, just two years away.
The smaller fluorescent bulbs have been around for at least 10 years. They’re more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but last longer and are more efficient. A Conservative’s dream. My brother (“Dollar Bill”) seeing a chance to save some green (money) bought a supply of them and instructed me to use them. I complied.
But leave it to the Liberals to find the Achille’s Heel in the fluorescent bulb: mercury. A dangerous substance if the bulb breaks. Did the Liberals outlaw this hazardous substance item? Not at all. They regulated it, and then legislated it into mandatory use. Now you must pay more money to buy this light bulb – the only light bulb retailers will be allowed to sell – and pay more money to dispose of it, and even more money to call in a HazMat team if it breaks in your home or office. It can also be bad for your eyes, especially working on your computer: something about the flicker rates, which are incompatible.
We learn from Glenn Beck (those of who didn’t know, including me, that is) about the Fabian Society, a genocidal socialist group in England which began in 1884 with leanings towards eugenics. One of is star members, George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygamlion (the story on which the musical My Fair Lady is based, only in his play, Eliza marries Freddie Eynsford-Hill). There are too many people, according to Shaw, and the useless ones should be neatly exterminated, like pests.
It reminded me of John Denver’s song, “Cold Nights in Canada” in which he pines for the fate of the Canadian Rockies. “How the life in the mountains is living in danger/From too many people, too many machines.” There are too many people and machines in New Jersey, too.
Denver was sincere in his beliefs. His songs were pleasant, but a bit unthinking. Being a fan, I bought most of his albums and attended four of his concerts. The one at the Jones Beach Theater on Long Island got rained out. Playing in the rain wasn’t in the contract of his union musicians, and no blame to them. Electrocution needn’t have been part of the deal.
But Denver was an honorable man - and a terrific singer and musician. He saw that a relative handful of us had still shown up to hear his concert and he honored our tickets. He couldn’t play the electric guitar, so he trotted out one of his folk guitars and played and sang for us; I believe unaided by electronics.
He also talked to us about how he rarely came East to do concerts here. He just didn’t like the East Coast; it was too crowded. There were too many people for his taste. It was dirty, crowded, and overbuilt. He preferred the open country of the West. No one on Long Island or in New Jersey could disagree with that assessment.
But what can you do? We also have too many deer. Hunters and imported coyotes (from the West) reduce the population. The Liberals, or Progressives, if you like, regard us in the same way. There are just too many people and something has to be done about it.
You can’t hunt them. But you can control them through government-sponsored medical care programs. First, you make them nice and comfortable. Offer them tempting programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Once enough of them are in the net, and you’ve bankrupted the system to the point that it’s no longer sustainable, you withdraw the care.
You begin with the most vulnerable demographic, the elderly. They’re going to die, anyway. They’re no longer of any use, according Shawnian standards. There’s no need for elaborate extermination machines, which would cost money to build. You simply withdraw their care.
Working from the other end, you sow dissatisfaction among the fertile female population at their lowly lot in life bearing children and tending to husbands. You introduce contraceptive drugs so they don’t overpopulate the globe and abortion in case they do. One last solution is to overtax undesirable families, to discourage political enemies from reproducing.
Just for good measure, too, to destabilize the nuclear family, you encourage over-stimulation in the younger generation, causing extra-marital pregnancies and illegitimate children with no financial support. These you want to preserve, because they’re your future socialist army.
You’ve now dealt with the fringes of the population. But there are still too many darned people. They’re also fighting back. So you regulate their lives and create onerous legislation that will discourage, and finally criminalize, dissent. Eventually, your lawyers can prove their danger to humanity and ultimately dispose of them. Legally.
The rest can be subdued through the destruction of the economy. Starving people will do anything you want, obey any command, carry out any order, unto the end of the earth. Your quest for power is nearly complete.
Except for their pesky God. Karl Marx may have observed that religion is the opiate of the masses. But you’d rather have them addicted to drugs than to religion. Destroying faith takes a generation or two. Mixed with some of the aforementioned drugs, it is possible to finally eliminate God and take His place as the ruler of the universe.
Sound crazy? Well, tomorrow we’re going to do our Glenn Beck homework and read for ourselves what this Fabian Society is all about. Then we’ll see who the lunatics really are.
posted by Belle | 7:33 PM
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